News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Starting the school day just one half-hour later produced such "stunning positive results" that a small boarding school decided to make the change permanent.

• The 201 students in the study not only slept later in the mornings, they started to feel so good from having extra sleep that they went to bed earlier.
• Average sleep duration increased by 45 minutes to almost 8 hours a day per student.
• By the end of the study, 54% of the students were getting eight hours of sleep a night compared to just 16% when the study began.
• Students also said they were less sleepy during the day.

The students were enrolled at St. George's boarding school in Rhode Island when Dr. Judith Owens began her study by pushing back the start of classes from 8 AM to 8:30 AM. Dr. Owens is director of the Pediatric Sleep Clinic at the Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI.

The percentage of students, who told Dr. Owens that they were "somewhat unhappy at least part of the day " fell from 66% to 45% by the end of the study. The percent of students who reported irritability, decreased from 84% to 63%. Only half as many students were tardy for first class by the end of the study, and more were eating breakfast.

The study appears in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
 

Labels: school, sleep_deprivation

Posted By: By Parents For Parents 1 Comment

Asian teenagers living with Canadian families as foreign exchange students are twice as likely to use cocaine, compared to other Canadians -- and nearly 25 percent of the girls in the study reported being sexually abused, according to research from the University of British Colombia.

The study of 3000 Asian exchange students in grades 7 to 12 found that they were more likely to binge drink, smoke, skip school, and be sexually active compared to immigrants or Canadian-born Asians.

Dr. Sabrina Wong initiated the study after becoming a host for a foreign student, and finding out that the application process was largely unregulated.

"There are no policies, there is no regulation, there are no standards, and there is no reporting," she said "Home-stay students are a forgotten group. At this point, they remained extremely vulnerable, because no one is responsible for the health or well being of them as a person."

Dr. Wong noted that most exchange students have good experiences. There were 18,200 foreign high school students in Canada in 2008.
 

Labels: students, drug_use, sexual abuse

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 1 Comment

Using self-hypnosis to alleviate Tourette's syndrome helped the majority of children in a new study published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Thirty-three children ages 6 to 19 years old suffering from Tourette's were taught how to use self-hypnosis and relaxation techniques as a way of controlling their involuntary tics such as blinking, coughing, yelling and head jerking. Twelve children had dramatic improvements after just two training sessions, and 13 had similar results after three visits.
 

Labels: health

Posted By: Jane St. Clair 1 Comment

Children with autism have different speech patterns, and they even babble differently as infants. By attaching a recording device to the clothing of infants and very young children, clinicians will soon be able to determine which children have autism.

The device, known as LENA or Learning Environment Analysis, was developed by Infoture, Inc., which became the nonprofit LENA Foundation. LENA devices not only record speech patterns, but they also analyze them to create vocal profiles of children.

"A small number of studies have previously suggested that children with autism have a markedly different vocal signature," said Professor Stephen Warren of the University of Kansas. "Until now we have been held back from using this knowledge in clinical applications from the lack of measurement technology."

The average child is diagnosed with autism at age 5.7 years old, according to Dr. Warren. LENA could produce a diagnosis in children as young as 18 months.
 

Labels: autism

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 1 Comment

In the 1980s doctors were identifying "crack babies," infants who had been affected by their mothers' use of cocaine during pregnancy. Today's doctors are seeing more babies that have been affected by their mothers' prenatal abuse of prescription painkillers.

• Symptoms experienced by the infants include stiff arms and legs, tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, and incessant crying, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
• Babies often have to go through withdrawal from these drugs, which can take three weeks to two months. Some doctors give the babies doses of morphine to ease their symptoms.

"We are seeing oxycodone, Vicodin, methadone and a lot of Xanax," said Dr. Mary Newport, medical director of Spring Hill Regional Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. "I'm amazed at the number of girls on antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, even during pregnancy."

Treatment centers report admitting more pregnant women with addictions to prescription painkillers, and many of the women are in their teens or 20s.

Labels: infants, mothers, pregnancy, prescription_drugs

Posted By: By Parents For Parents 0 Comments

Teens are dropping out of the popular online social network Facebook -- and one of the the most common reasons is that too many adults have discovered "their" network.

• A survey of 600 teenagers was performed for an online gaming company called Roiworld.
• Almost 80% said they had a Facebook profile, and 69% were still using it.
• However, among these teenagers, one in three was going on Facebook just to play online games and not to connect with friends.
• One in five no longer is using Facebook because they have lost interest (45%), too many adults and older people are there (14%), their parents have set up profiles (14%), and they are concerned about privacy issues (13%).

The survey indicated that 43% of the teenagers have spent money online, and 75% play online games.
 

Labels: internet, social-networking, facebook

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 1 Comment

Lindsay Ferrier’s parents weren’t cool. They enforced curfews, grounded her for bad grades, and insisted on meeting every boy who took her out on a date. She swore that, when she had kids, she’d be a “cool” parent.

“Unfortunately, my honeymoon phase didn’t last long. In what seemed like eight milliseconds, I had two babies, my stepdaughters became teenagers, and my ‘cool parent’ days came to an abrupt end … Because according to my teens, a cool parent wouldn’t have batted an eyelash if her stepdaughter rolled in a 4 a.m., hours after curfew. I freaked. A cool parent wouldn’t mind finding a six-pack of beer in the trunk of her teen’s car. I would mind. I’d mind a lot.” [Source: The Nashville Scene]

She’s not a cool parent, but she’s a good parent. And as she reflects on her own childhood, Lindsay thinks having “uncool” parents may have been one of the best things that happened to her.

Labels: parenting tips, parenting_styles

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has found that children with mood disorders often get overlooked. HHS found that more than 10 percent of children ages 9 to 17 experience a mood disorder of one kind or another.

“And about half of them are receiving no therapy or treatment, reported a study in Pediatrics conducted by researchers from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. Kids with anxiety and depression, especially, are going without treatment, the study found.” [Source: Health On the Net Foundation]

Mood disorders in kids are often not taken seriously because most adults think the kids will just grow out of it. But 25 percent of kids who have major depression grow up to become bipolar. Children, even teenagers, have trouble expressing their emotions, so they aren’t always able to tell someone if they’re having trouble. They need observant adults watching out for them, looking for signs of depression, anxiety or other mood disorders.

Labels: mood disorders

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 1 Comment

Teenagers have been in the news for attempting some daunting feats in the past few months. A 13-year-old became the youngest person to summit Mt. Everest. Abby Sunderland, at age 16, almost became the youngest person to sail around the world. Their activities have sparked a “how young is too young” debate.

“Taking appropriate risks can teach valuable life lessons such as self-reliance and character building. Living in a bubble-wrapped world makes for a safe, but boring existence. But where to draw the line between adventure and folly cannot be determined with the precision of a law or book on parenting. It’s a decision best left to families who know their children best.” [Source: The Starr Press (IN)]

Most teens aren’t emotionally or mentally ready to summit Mt. Everest, or sail around the world. But they may be ready to take on more responsibility than adults realize.

Labels: risky_behavior

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

In a neighborhood full of young people, one house usually ends up being the “hot spot” where everyone hangs out. If that’s your house, you may find yourself in the unique position of having to discipline other people’s children.

Judy Arnall, Calgary-based author of Discipline Without Distress, says this one’s not in the parenting books: "Most advice focuses on parenting your children, not parenting other people’s children."

Experts say the key is consistency … [establish] a united front, communicate and decide on rules beforehand.” [Source: The Globe and Mail]

If the neighborhood kids are coming to your house a lot, invite parents over for a visit and set some rules and boundaries everyone can agree to. That way, other parents have a better idea what’s happening at your house, and won’t be shocked if you have to discipline their child.

Labels: parenting tips, communication, discipline

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

For most children, summer means a break from homework, teachers, and tests. For children with ADHD, should summer also be a time to take a vacation from their ADHD medication?

At least one expert advises against taking children off their ADHD meds over the summer:

“Kids’ summer drug holidays haven’t been studied much, but going off treatments doesn’t let children feel and perform at their best – and it may be risky to go off and go back on treatment, says Scott H. Kollins, PhD, director of the Duke ADHD Program in the department of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC.” [Source: WebMD]

One potential benefit to a drug holiday relates to a child’s overall growth. Some studies have shown a possible link between ADHD medication and stunted growth, but the relationship isn’t widely accepted. Also, the negatives of a drug holiday (difficulty socializing, for example) may outweigh any possible benefits.

Labels: adhd, summer, meds

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments

Wealthy families are twice as likely to have children with autism, and no one knows why, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Experts have known since the 1940s that affluent parents are more likely to have children with this spectrum, but the prevalent theory was that children from wealthier families were more likely to be diagnosed and to seek medical help. Dr. Maureen Durkin set out to design a study that would determine if that were the case or if something else was going on.

Professor Durkin took census information on socioeconomic status that includes education, profession, and income level and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. She found that children from affluent families were twice as likely to have autism than the poorest children.

"We demonstrated that there is this association," she said. "It is statistically significant, and it is there, but we really cannot show why it is there. There may be a genetic predisposition to both becoming highly successful and to be at risk for autism."

This study was published in PLoS One.
 

Labels: autism, economics

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 1 Comment

The dramatic increase in ADHD among children has the medical community looking for reasons why. One of its discoveries is that kids who play video games or watch TV for more than two hours per day have trouble concentrating.

“’I think the concern is that the pacing of the program, whether its video games or TV is overstimulating and contributes to attention problems,’ [Dimitri] Christakis says. Psychologist Craig Anderson, one of the study authors, agrees. ‘The kind of screen time that is probably most harmful… is screen time in which the viewer or the game player has to make a lot of quick decisions,’ he says.” [Source: NPR]

The study, out of the University of Iowa, surveyed teachers and parents about kids’ video game and TV-watching habits. Kids who spent a lot of time in front of a screen were twice as likely to have attention problems.

Labels: television, computers, adhd, attention

Posted By: Stefanie Hamilton 0 Comments